What Is Reality In the Context of Physics? by Georgina Parry

Dear Georgina,

Wouldn't it be reasonable attributing reality always to an object of consideration, never to the observer, except of course if the observer himself is the object of consideration? I admit having difficulties to swallow the method synchronization which was to my knowledge introduced by Poincaré and tacitly adopted in 1905.

Kind regards,

Eckard

Hi Georgina, as a lurker I have enjoyed your comments in the FQXi forum. I'm glad you wrote an essay. I agree with a lot of the points that you make, for example, "The curvature of space-time is an interpretation fitting the observation of image reality, not underlying object reality." However I might have said "not *necessarily* underlying object reality," because I disagree that even if this is so, there needs to be some other "cause" of gravity besides curvature. That, I think, is a philosophical issue. In my opinion, one theoretical interpretation is as good as any other so long as the interpretations are equally predictive and consistent with the observations. We needn't declare that it is the curvature itself that causes gravitation.

Since you're a biology person I hope you will check out my essay -- our ideas cross paths in several places, for instance that the future is uncertain -- that "If [the past and future] do not exist, with actual material content, but are imaginary, they cannot be visited or altered." I have a diagram showing how the present fits into my view of a digital reality emerging out of an uncertain analog nature. Also, your discussion of the digital nature of biological senses. (I talk about DNA as an example of biological digital information.) Thank you for adding another biological perspective! Best of luck in the contest.

Dear Georgina,

Why not taking in consideration the possibility that

- objective reality belongs to the object of consideration,

- it cannot at all be immediately observed from outside

- it must nonetheless be somehow related to something observable.

Consequences from your reasoning seems to confirm the suspicion uttered in my Appendix C.

I am just critically reading "The Special Theory of Relativity" by David Bohm, 3rd ed. 1996 London and New York: Routledge.

Kind regards,

Eckard

Happy to see you dear Georgina,

But where were you stILL hihihi ?

good luck for the contest

Regards

Steve

Georgina,

I have never heard Einstein quoted as saying "reality is an illusion." Possibly you mean his statement, "time is an illusion." Einstein's physics assumes an objective reality.

Tom

EPR gave this telltale criterion of Einstein's notion of physical reality:

If, without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty (i.e., with probability equal to unity) the value of a physical quantity, then there exists an element of reality corresponding to that quantity.

I guess, Einstein considered his spacetime a reality. Nonetheless, I agree with Georgina in that spacetime cannot be objectively real. You may either disprove this opinion or accept its consequences.

Eckard

Great to see you here Georgina, I was starting to worry.

I know yours is an important essay, and I haven't even read it yet! But before I forget I would like to comment on the above.

Eckards, Appendix C I think is an unavoidable consequence of the whole truth, and I'm sure you'll agree. I have mentioned to Eckard a role for the Lorentz transformation, but it is not in exponentially suppressing abstracted points, lines and speed (not "attached to a body") on the alter of our faith. I've now found this clearly applying to the energy required (transferred between f and lambda) to accelerate a signal, or a massive body, from one inertial frame to another. look at the LHC, that's the shape of the power input curve, and it needs almost infinite power to get a decent string of 9's on 99.9999% c.

Karl was very sensible in my opinion in not falling into the 'cause and effect' trap of insisting curvature 'causes' gravity. I entirely agree with you again, except that curvature does of course have some kind of a role in this play. With your concrete reality we can define it.

perhaps it's no co-incidence that the LHC em field propagates it's own virtual electron (plasma) cloud, as well as the one round the bunch, to bend the beam round the pipe. Or that plasma in halo's and shocks diffract light entirely as it does in the lab to curve it in lensing. Both give off precisely the same syncrotron light. From optic fibre science we know em waves are propagated by atomic scattering - polarisation and re-emission by particles (PMD). We have a known working quantum process equivalent to Maxwell Einstein's weak field approximation that does precisely what we see and agrees with SR/GR.

Can I suggest there may be an argument that if it waddles, swims, quacks and goes with orange really nicely like SR/GR, it may be worth using it as a substitute, just for a while, till we manage to catch and tie down some real SR/GR.?

Do you suppose there is a chance science may get used to it and eventually grow to prefer it to the real thing?

Eckard's last words above about accepting consequences are very wise. I think I'll agree entirely with your essay, and it's consequences. I hope my own may help explain why.

I'll return after a read. Very best of luck.

Peter

Georgina,

You've said the same thing for years, but never so well before. Congratulations.

One reason this essay is so cogent is that you focus on the 'objective world' and 'image reality', both of which exist as physically comprehensible phenomena, and you have not mentioned (except implicitly) the 'subjective world' (that we know interprets the images).

Your sequence of presentation is superb. Your explanation of 'current time' vs. 'present now' superb, and you make many sorely needed observations, such as:

"...the medium...must exist to account for observations...without having to resort to many worlds supernatural interpretations of reality or the belief that hypothetical constructs [wave functions] formed from mathematical equations without real counterpart in the object universe control the position and momentum of real particles, or that nothing is real."

You have laid it all out so clearly that I believe you may wish to look at the Maxwell-Einstein gravito-magnetic aspect of gravity [that I call 'the C-field'] --the gravitic *analog* of the magnetic B-field induced by moving charges-- as a physical field that can do duty as your 'unseen medium'. The C-field is induced locally by moving mass. It's 'wave like' existence accompanies every electron and photon with momentum and interacts with other mass/momentum in the neighborhood, including 'two slit' apparatus. It is a 'real' field, not a mathematical construct like the wave function, but it has the same mathematical description as the wave function. See figure and function at top of page 6 here.

I intended to just compliment your fine essay, but since you have 'set up' things so well I cannot resist trying to show how well the C-field fits your need for unobserved 'medium'. The existence of the C-field is not in argument, but its strength and significance is debatable.

You have, in essence, made the argument that [something like] the C-field is needed. I hope you will give serious consideration to the reality of a field that behaves as you say 'a medium' must.

You have also held up for closer examination such ideas as space-time, wave-functions, many worlds, and extra dimensions and found them lacking objective reality. That's a lot to accomplish in nine pages.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Georgina

Wonderful, even better than I expected. Thank you for making me feel so good and less alone. And I'm very impressed with your courage in speaking out about the king's new clothes.

I believe you'll find Edwin's C field is an excellent approximation of the medium needed to convert from object to received reality. ..Wow, perhaps there really IS a chance we might help finally drag physics out of this deep conceptual rut!

I have 3 points. Just one alone to take you to task on, and two I hope will help, all related.

1/ I'm not sure how carefully you considered c being affected by gravity. Of course light does c in a vertical vacuum on earth as well as deep space. It may well of course be red shifted (going up)as EA suggested. But of course time dilation does that job, or does it? There is a lot going on here, but I think I've unravelled the complex puzzle to offer an answer. - viz;

2/ You correctly identify "the greater the mass the greater the inertia", but how do we explain that a '100 ton' asteroid exerts more gravity passing Earth at 0.3c as 0.1c. (Equivalence of Grav v Inertial Mass) Yet to someone travelling alongside it, it does not??!

OK, firstly our ether is needed, oops! ..I'll call it our dark energy 'C' field. Now, when our rock flies through it it can condense the plasma of ionised particles that we know it does.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0019-1035(79)90092-7

Stokes parameters for Thomson scattering in a cold magnetized plasma Astrophysics and Space Science Volume 218, No 1, 87-100, DOI: 10.1007/BF006580680Diffuse Ion Scattering in front of the Earth's Quasi-Parallel Bow Shock.American GPhysUnion. SOA/NASA

2010. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AGUFMSM51B1806K

http://iopscience.iop.org/1475-7516/2011/01/009

Ooops, sorry, ..got carried away, but, quantitively, they found 2' of arc diffraction through a comet coma tail recently. These particles of course have inertial mass, and, .. now wasn't there something that inertial mass equals?!

There goes that thing that looks just like duck again - now in every detail.

(It tasted good too, so the paper went in yesterday - but will almost certainly be rejected like the last one, as it challenges relativity).

3/ Dammit, I knew I should have written it down! Anyway. You've done a brilliant job further and very eloquently expose the shortcomings of our interpretation of Relativity, but it will never be superceeded till we find how things really DO work. I hope now you'll far better understand my own essay than last year.

The key experiment can be done with a glass of beer or plasma in a bar. If you could see a light pulse being scattered through it; Does the subjective apparent speed you see change by c/n or c/n +/- v when your friend Hendrik slides it at ever faster v past you along the bar?

Oh and thanks for the credit! I have a horrid feeling you got squeezed out of mine on the cutting room floor! My sincerest apologies, ..but highest rating!

Peter

Dear Georgina,

Soon after I posted my essay I thought about you. I considered posting a message in the blogs section encouraging you and Tom to submit essays. Before I did that your essay appeared. We enterred on the same day. I printed your essay off but have not yet read it. I just wanted to say that I am glad that you enterred, but, not quite so glad to see that you quickly burried me in the ratings. Really, my message is one of 'good luck to you'.

James

Georgina,

Excellent essay. It says something about the state of physics that such a clear and well reasoned description of the relationship between objective and subjective concepts of reality bumps enough sacred cows off the road that it likely won't get the attention it deserves. We can always hope though.

Good luck and thanks for the mention.